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Month: May 2026

Categories
Culture

Something Stiff This Way Comes

By Bel Radford

It is a truth most unfortunate that Fashion’s Great Pervert, as we know it, has been thoroughly domesticated. You could send a rubber clad ponyboy with a ball-gag down any runway and it would fail to register as particularly transgressive, The object can no longer be abject when it’s been cannibalised by the market, as chronicled over the past half century.   

Throughout the 70s and 80s, Vivienne Westwood and Malcom Mclaren freed fashion from the chains of sexual conservativism. Littering the streets of Chelsea with sexual paraphernalia, from hobble straps, crotch zips, and bum flaps, thrusting forward the fin de siècle cultural breeding ground of revolution regarding the body politic. As such, the iconography of perversion clambered up the runway and became the enfant terrible of the fashion world. Provocateurs of the fashion world began to circle the drain of vulgarity; 90’s Mugler collections found themselves peeling with latex whilst Versace ventured into the depths of the red room in their 1992 Miss S&M collection. Soon, such indulgence into perversion trickled down into the market at large for the ritual of commodification to begin. It’s now rather normal to wear leather chokers, studs, maybe a harness in a somewhat casual register – and so it’s clear we’ve flipped over the clandestine underbelly of perversion and gutted it of all substance. For instance, when Dua Lipa wore the bondage gown from Miss S&M at the 2022 Grammys, it was worn and received as a museum drag piece that celebrated the history of the pervert, but certainly not the presence of one. However, paraphilia, as per the human condition, will prevail, and as a matter of principle must remain transgressive. And so it’s wriggled its way out of the spiked collar the market walks it by, and has reinvented itself in all its slippery countenance; hang up the gimp suit, the contemporary freaks are wearing office formal. 

I came to this realisation while seeking solace in Haneke’s remarkably apt film The Piano Teacher (2001). For the uninitiated, the film follows Erika Kohut, a cold, sensitive, and sexually repressed middle-aged piano teacher at a Viennese Conservatoire, who finds herself in a sadomasochistic liaison with her student, Walter Klemmer, whose sexuality is gauchely overt, and as such absolutely cannot match her freak. Perversion lies at the crux of the narrative, yet Erika clads herself in stiflingly mundane outfits, attempting to reassure herself of her similarly rigid character. She wears sensible and nondescript knitwear, stiff starch blazers layered over dainty silk blouses, drab pleats and beige monoliths, punctuated by the occasional smear of colour and the pair of gloves she wears every time she leaves the house to go to the porn shop. Erika’s wardrobe is banal and conventional, yet it carries immense ontological weight, its stiffness actualises her repression, creating a dichotomy between character and clothing whereby her outfits become vectors of calculated and powerful libido, and objects of psychosexuality.

The power of her clothing has not gone unignored by the fashion zeitgeist. Erika Kohut was the muse of SHUSHU/TONG’s SS25 collection The Pleasure Of Rejection, shown at Shanghai Fashion Week. Liushu Lei (Shushu of SHUSHU/TONG) told Culted that the emotional tone of the collection was informed by restraint and introspection, noting how ‘In [Erika’s] mind, the lines between attraction and rejection seem to blur, creating a chaotic unity. This dynamic felt like a deconstruction of the binary between the two concepts, offering immense dramatic tension’, adding that ‘Erika Kohut is such a complex female character, sensitive, conflicted and even mad. Beneath her restrained and reserved exterior lies desperation and chaos, with emotions that rage like a storm’. These observations illustrate the ways in which collections like The Pleasure Of Rejection re-project a film’s psychological weight back onto the body, the ways in which desire becomes most energised through the restraint of being tightly buttoned up – a new type of bondage.

Similar comparisons can be made in Shainburg’s 2002 film The Secretary, wherein a young woman, Lee Holloway, having been recently released from a mental hospital, gets a job as a secretary to lawyer Edward Grey, who she establishes a sexually sadomasochistic relationship with. Her wardrobe is particularly striking as it evolves in tandem with her sexual and professional literacy: she begins dressing soberly – wearing silk blouses, skirts and stockings – yet her capacity for sexual expression becomes compounded. By the time she’s saddled up and crawling around Grey’s office, the erotic logic has long been present in her wardrobe as a mechanism of submission, her pencil skirt as restraint and her buttoned up collar already a collar. The Secretary has also been an object of inspiration within the fashion world, with Enfants Riches Déprimés extracting and interpreting the infamous bondage rig look onto the runway in their SS25 collection Inside Capitalism. 

There is a case to be made for how both films were released in the very early 2000s, yet are only now really being celebrated and explored within fashion. The market spent the intervening decades digesting and mainstreaming the more overt face of perversion until it became palatable and gutted of ontological weight, exhausting its typical forward-facing fetish iconography in the process. Fashion now reaches backward in the cultural milieu for a sexuality undefiled by the market with a visual language communicative of perversion in its truest form, as eroticism in today’s cultural landscape offers meagre viable alternatives, clinically administering desire through legible, sexless blockbusters and hyper-sanitised cultural output. This has left a vast black hole in the place of sensuality with any real dissolute underbelly, yet office wear arguably provides a visual language exploratory of this lack. As demonstrated by Erika and Lee, the rigidity of formal wear encrypts, contains and yet compounds perversion. Perhaps this is where the contemporary appeal lies: subverted desire becomes infinite. 

Featured Image: Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary (2002, dir. Steven Shainberg)

Categories
Perspective

We Should Start Beheading Men Again (in Art, of Course)

By Nicole Ruf

We take women’s suffering and call it art. 

I am standing in the Loggia Dei Lanzi, perhaps the most magnificent open-air gallery in the world, Florence doing what Florence does best, making you feel simultaneously small and inexplicably chosen, and I watch all the tourists congregate around Perseus, as if they have all come to the telepathic consensus that this is the piece worth noting. He is glorious, naturally, Cellini made sure of this. He stands with his arm raised, holding the severed head of Medusa aloft, his boot pressing down on what remains of her body, her breasts pointing toward the sky, with the casual confidence of a man. Her neck is open; her limbs arranged with a particular elegance only a sculptor deeply in love with female suffering might achieve. Everyone takes pictures. 

A few meters away, the Sabine women are held mid-scream. They have been like this for centuries. Giambologna froze them here, arms outstretched, mouths open, bodies twisted, writhing in the grip of men who decided, one afternoon, that they were owed wives. The Rape of the Sabine Women is considered a masterpiece of Mannerist composition. There is probably a fridge magnet at the souvenir tents in the piazza. 

Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus with the Head of Medusa & Giambologna, Rape of the Sabine Women

Both bear the full, dizzying weight of a civilisation that built its vision of beauty atop women’s bodies. You are forced to stand there, in the open air and scorching sun, among the crowds, and obliged to appreciate the craftsmanship, the invention, the man. 

The mise-en-scène changes, but the woman’s role does not. She is the body the hero stands on, the wound the story opens. I have been thinking about decapitation ever since. 

—

It is appropriate, then, I think, to start with Medusa. She was, depending on who you ask, a monster, a priestess, a survivor, or simply a beautiful woman who made the catastrophic mistake of existing in a temple where a god felt entitled to help himself to her. In the oldest versions, she is mortal and ravishing. Poseidon assaults her in Athena’s temple. Athena, in a characteristically divine display of lateral thinking, punishes her; turns her hair into snakes, makes her gaze deadly, condemns her to an island at the edge of the world. Then Perseus arrives, guided and armed by the gods, cuts off her head, weaponises it and turns enemies to stone with her lifeless face. Her power, born of violation, becomes his trophy.

Taming the wild woman is the maximum expression of male victory. This thesis is repeated in marble and bronze and oil paint across every major gallery in the world. The hero does not just defeat a monster; he decapitates the unruly feminine and carries her head around as proof of his greatness. 

Caravaggio, Head of  Medusa

The Uffizi holds an object that makes this completely literal. Caravaggio’s Head of Medusa is not a painting in any conventional sense; it is painted on a wooden shield, commissioned as a ceremonial gift for Grand Duke Ferdinando I de Medici, intended to symbolise his courage in defeating his enemies. It stayed in the Medici armoury for over a century, a woman’s face deployed as military iconography. Mouth open, eyes wide, snakes still squirming; horrifyingly human and not monstrous at all, exchanged between powerful men as victorious symbols. 

Medusa never gets to be anything other than the thing being killed. 

—

Then there are other women, armed, instead, with the sword. 

Donatello, Judith and Holofernes

Judith stands in bronze in the Piazza della Signoria, small and severe, very much out of place among all the muscular civic bravado of marble and plaster. She hangs on walls across the city, too, painted by all the greats. Always holding the same thing. 

The head of Holofernes. 

She did as Perseus did, is the point. She got close enough to the enemy and cut his head from his body. Her story is biblical: a widow, a commoner, who charmed the Assyrian general besieging her city, got him blind drunk, took his own sword and beheaded him with it. It is a tale of nerve and patience, of clear-eyed understanding of what men are when they think they are about to get what they want.

Jan Massijs, Judith with the head of Holofernes; Luchas Cranach, Judith with the Head of Holofernes; Peter Paul Rubens, Judith and Holofernes; Cristofano Allori, Judith with the Head of Holofernes; Gustav Klimt, Judith I

And yet. 

Look at how she is painted. Massijs strips her nude, holding the head like a handbag. In Cranach’s she stands with her composed Renaissance face, rosy-cheeked and soft-lashed, the scene bathed in the warm lighting of a specifically male fantasy. In Rubens’ she is jewelled and splendid and somehow, impossibly, still glamorous. Allori painted her so beautifully that she must have been painted from life, and she was: his own lover, the model, himself as Holofernes, and this apparently romantic. Klimt painted her later too, nude and sexually satisfied, Holofernes barely present, head cropped by the frame as an afterthought. This painting is called feminist by some. I can tell you it is not. It is the male gaze recuperating even the image of female power back into erotica. Every generation gets the Judith it deserves, and most generations have deserved little. 

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Beheading Holofernes

Artemisia Gentileschi is the exception. 

Only a woman could have painted Judith like this, only a woman who inhabits a real body and knows what it means for the world to take it. Artemisia was raped by her father’s associate, Agostino Tassi, at seventeen. At the trial, it was she, not Tassi, who was tortured; ropes tightened around her fingers during questioning, ropes, she noted in devastating sarcasm, like the wedding bands Tassi had promised her. Throughout it all, she remained defiant, immovable: it is true, it is true, it is true. Tassi had friends in high papal places, and so he was cleared. Artemisia went home, and painted Judith. 

Her Judith is not seductive, not satisfied. She grips Holofernes by the hair with the pragmatic strength of a woman who has made a decision and will see it through. Her maidservant holds him down. Blood pools and splatters onto white sheets. It is not pretty nor erotic. It is female rage, and what it looks like, really looks like, when a woman is allowed to paint it herself; not a fantasy, not an excuse to show a beautiful body. The thing that needed doing, being done. 

—

Alonso Berruguete, Salome

Salomé gets less credit, which is instructive. Stepdaughter of Herod Antipas, she danced at his feast and pleased him enough that he offered her anything she wanted. Prompted by her mother’s grievance, she asked for the head of John the Baptist, and received exactly that. Her motives are considered impure: personal, petty, emotional. She did not do it to save a city. As if men have ever required noble motives for their violence.

What made Salomé so threatening that centuries of painters and priests worked to contain her is that her reason is simply because: because he deserved it, because I decided, because I was owed a wish, and this is what I wished for. The femme fatale is the man’s name for the woman who acts on her own terms without offering justification he might recognise. Women are permitted rage only when it is in service of someone else. 

Judith and Salomé have been manufactured by history, remade to fit the story men most want to read. The Bible is not mistranslated by a change of language but by a change of morals and truth. They are painted and repainted, sometimes heroines, sometimes monsters, often nothing more than beautiful bodies holding props. 

—

There is also a different tradition, one that does not give you a sword. 

Galleries contain what feels like a thousand paintings of the Virgin Mary. She is in every room, every altarpiece, every triptych; nursing, praying, receiving the news. Always beautiful, always mild, and always available; to you, to the gaze, to the narrative requirements of a tradition that needs a woman pure enough to mother God but not powerful enough to threaten him. 

Sandro Botticelli, The Madonna of the Sea 

Yet Mary is queen of the Earth. Without her body, her yes, or her body’s yes, depending on which theologians you consult, there is no redemption, no story. She is painted holding the child, and she looks elsewhere while he looks at her. For a moment, God’s entire world was a woman, this woman. The hinge on which everything turns, the architecture of Western civilisation, runs on a woman’s womb, and she gets pale blue drapery, and a lot of mild portraits people rush past, in return. 

Mary Magdalene is her counterpart. She is, in the earliest texts, one of the most significant figures in the story; first witness to the resurrection. By the sixth century, she had been collapsed into a composite of unnamed sinful women and declared a prostitute. The Church did not retract this until 1969. 

She is painted, overwhelmingly, weeping. Beautiful and weeping, her hair loose, loose hair being the Renaissance shorthand for sexual availability, a detail the painters understood very well. She is the cautionary tale standing next to the impossible ideal, together they construct the complete architecture of what women are permitted to be: the virgin or the whore, the mother or the magdalene, the one who never sins or the one who never stops paying for it.

Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Palestrina Pietà

What I feel, standing in front of yet another Annunciation, is weight, not theological, but the physical kind. Mary carries Christ in her body; births him, raises him, watches him die. The pietà: mother holding her dead son, body draped across her lap, a woman absorbing the full weight of the world’s grief. 

We are not given the sword; we are given the greater burden. Mary accepts, endures, loves beyond any reasonable expectation of reciprocity. The Church built a civilisation on the willingness of women to do exactly this, and called it grace, and called it virtue, and painted it ten thousand times in pale blue and gold.

—

Perseus’ arm is still raised, Medusa’s head still drips its bronze blood. The Sabine women are still mid-scream, and nobody is stopping to ask them why. I stand and I think about all the Sabines, the Virgins, the Magdalenes, the Judiths in their dozens, Salome with her platter, Artemisia’s white sheets soaked red. We built the most beautiful city in the world out of this fabric: out of women’s suffering, women’s bodies, women’s labour, women’s silence. 

The snakes, the exile, the death, the head as trophy, everything came after that one moment, that one casual assumption that she was there to be taken. And the culture said: yes, and built a statue of the man who finished the job, and put it in the most beautiful square in the world, and called it civilisation.

We have been here the whole time. In the margins of the altarpieces and the backgrounds of the allegories and the corners of the loggie, holding our swords, waiting for someone to look at the right painting.

Maybe it is time to pick the sword back up.

Not in art, necessarily.

In art, of course. 

Featured Image: Le Gallerie Degli Uffizi

Categories
Poetry

Shades of Purple

By Theo Turner

Lilac cards lay strewn on the carpet.

A smattering of patterned backs and pruned plum pips

 Discarded from whatever 

Late night

Mystic revelries

You previously entertained.

You lounge above, on the sofa;

Book in one hand, coffee in another.

A singular chipped violet nail 

Taps each grape in turn, on the chipped mug

(Your mug).

The lamp is on,

You bought that shade

From the shop down the road

So it can throw heathered hues

On your favoured kitchen table spot.

I ask to borrow your perfume – 

I have a date later and he seems like a Poison Dior kinda guy. 

You smile your assent so I pad to your room.

There a rug fills the floor

Like a fresh bruise

Spreading on soft skin.

A thistle charm 

Hangs 

From your windows’ handle.

It reminds me of the amethyst earring you wear

And tug when too many people enter the room. 

Returning, I spot a lavender circle poking from your jumper;

I know you sleep in that top.

I’ve never seen those sleeves that brush your knuckles,

Brush your knuckles outside.

You claim it compliments your eyes.

I think they need no trouble with that

But let you have the excuse 

So I can spot the tannin soaked tell of your presence.

The juice stained thumb marks from your love.

You tell me you want to plant a wisteria

In the pot on our balcony.

This flat will be long gone by the time it first blooms.

Featured Image – Pinterest

Categories
Creative Writing

Waltz for Debby

By Matthew Dodd

He’d put on a collared shirt for the occasion, knowing as he did that Debby liked him best in collared shirts. He was sorry he didn’t wear them more often but, to his great shame, he never quite mastered the art of ironing. This one was pale blue and dotted with, in the words of the charming and vaguely European shop clerk who’d sold it to him, ‘orbs like the stars at night.’ It was more expensive than he’d hoped but Willard had let him pick up an extra shift on Tuesday night, so it wasn’t too bad. Trouser-wise he was hoping Debby wouldn’t notice that these were his bowling trousers and might simply take him as the kind of a man who would naturally own and habitually sport navy chinos. They were good because of the give around the thigh; he lunged deep when he bowled, that was the secret to his success. 

The phone rang while he was plucking his monobrow. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said with a solitary hair caught between the tweezers. ‘Don’t say uh-huh like that Herb, it makes you sound like a slob.’ He tore out the hair in shock and stood up straight, as though his handset might judge him the worse otherwise. ‘Ah, sorry Deb, I didn’t know it was you.’ A grumble from the other end of the line. ‘Well, that’s just the problem, isn’t it Herb? You never do know who could be on the phone, do you? I might be Bobby Kennedy for all you know.’ The line stayed silent for some few seconds as Herb percolated this. ‘You’re not, are you?’ No response. ‘I don’t mean to be difficult, I just sorta hoped we could keep politics out of the bedroom is all.’ A crackling hiss that might’ve been laughter: that was good enough for Herb. ‘What time did you make the reservation for? Paula wants me to stick around until close tonight, I’d say no but what with Gail sick and Murph bailing on us, I can’t bear to leave her on her own.’ Herb had put the tweezers down and stood cradling the telephone like he’d seen the Virgin Mary do with the baby Jesus in some of those pictures at church. ‘You’re calling from the bakery? Say, you got any of the brioche lying around that might be unfit for consumers, if you know what I mean?’ Another grumble. ‘Sorry. The reservation is for 8, but I can call and move it if you –‘she didn’t let him finish. ‘No, that’s fine, I’ll see you at 8.’ She appreciated the drama inherent in the urgent putting down of a telephone. Herb smiled and reset the handset before returning to his tweezing. 

On the subway, Herb saw four dogs, two cats, a baby, and a saxophonist: he gave one of them a quarter, but planned not to tell Debby which. Debby worked at a bakery called Loaf at First Sight. At first, Herb was attracted to the pun moreso than the woman behind the counter, but after watching her delicately assemble a ham and cheese croissant in a little under forty seconds, his opinions became inverted. The bakery was two stops from Sal’s Own, the second-rate restaurant Herb had booked – he usually opted for third-rate establishments, so this was something of a treat. Debby got to Sal’s two minutes before Herb, but waited a few paces out of view so that she might spare his feelings by appearing, as if by some miracle, a matter of seconds after he eventually arrived. He offered her a polite kiss on the cheek, she obligingly accepted.

‘Some place, huh?’ Herb observed as they took their seats at a table by the front window with an ample view of the passing traffic and an old man asleep on a park bench. Debby agreed in her usual way, a curt nod which landed somewhere between approval and condescension. They both ordered spaghetti with marinara sauce and decided to split a bottle of the second most expensive wine. An hour or so later, as the dishes were being taken, Debby made the face Herb recognised as her important point expression. She swapped her purse between her hands a few times before speaking: ‘Herb, there’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.’ This time, Herb cut her off. ‘Say, I got you something!’ He reached around for the messenger bag his dad gave him when he turned 17 and produced a 12-inch vinyl record. ‘Well, Ralph spotted me the money, but it was me who picked it out – thought that counts right?’ He passed it across the table to Debby, who examined it with a tender care: Waltz for Debby, Bill Evans Trio. ‘You get it?’ Herb began. ‘Waltz for Debby! It’s a waltz for you! I heard Willard and his buddies talking about it – intellectual jazz types y’know – and knew I had to get it for you.’ Debby smiled down at the record and, after a few moments, up at Herb. ‘Thank you, Herb,’ She started, before, ‘I’ve been offered a job in Chicago, and I’m afraid I’m leaving tomorrow.’ In his head, Herb heard the sound of an empty telephone line. 

‘Tomorrow?’ Debby nodded. ‘Chicago?’ She repeated the action. Under his breath he murmured a half-formed joke about the deep-pan style pizza he’d heard from someone at work say that they had over in Chicago, but gave up before he reached the punchline. A silence marinated between them. Herb tapped a rhythm with his knife and fork. 

‘What do you say you come back to mine and we give this Bill character a spin?’ The ends of Debby’s eyebrows sunk; her mouth folded into a half-frown. ‘I’m sorry Herb, I’ve made up my mind. I can’t stay here forever, spinning my wheels. It’s a good job, a real good job. It’s not that I don’t love it here, or that I don’t – ‘. She cut herself off. ‘It’s just that I can’t stand still any longer.’ Herb smiled. ‘Is that yes, then?’ Her frown intensified. Before she could get out an affectionately scolding ‘Herb…’ he’d interjected. ‘Look, I won’t ask you to stay. I’ve been losing you ever since I met you: that’s just the way of things. But.’ He grasped around in the air for the words. ‘Won’t you just listen to this record with me? I hear it’s really good.’ They sat for a second in silence; outside, the old man awoke and set off towards a nearby bar. ‘You don’t need to love me forever Debs, just let me have the song. Can’t you stand still one more night?’ Behind the counter, a young waiter dropped a bowl of olives and swore loudly. Head downturned, Debby’s head rocked back and forth, a negotiation between agreement and dissent. ‘Oh, Herb. Why’d you have to go and buy me a present?’ The corner of her mouth curled upward as she caught Herb’s eyes: ‘you never know, I might just give you a dance as well.’

As they got up, Debby noticed a stain of marinara sauce across Herb’s collar. He scoffed: ‘and I tried my best to look all refined.’ Debby laughed slightly. ‘Ah well’, she said, ‘it’s the thought that counts.’

They walked to the subway arm-in-arm, how Debby saw them do in the movies, and made the 8.15 train. The couple were in Herb’s sitting room by 9. Debby sat and giggled as Herb awkwardly tried to drop the needle on the exact start of the album, a fool’s errand that lasted about as long as the record itself. Once it started, he emphatically cast his hand out towards Debby and, with slightly overambitious energy, pulled her up to him. Together, they shuffled across the room with all the soaring romance of Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, only lacking in some of the grace. In a moment of special closeness, Debby looked up at Herb with a warmth he remembered from their early days. He made a point of not looking down to meet her eyes; he didn’t want her to see him cry. After what felt like a moment but must have been some forty minutes, the record spun out and was replaced by a dry hiss of static. They remained unmoved for a moment before Herb released Debby from their embrace and, with a voice just shy of cracking told her she ought to be on her way. She didn’t want to miss her train, after all. Debby agreed and set off to move. At the door, they shared a polite kiss and a quiet goodbye. 

As she left, Debby could hear Herb reset the needle on the record and start it over. She could still hear it outside, as she looked back up at the apartment. Through the window, it looked like he was dancing.

Photo Credit: Constantine Manos

Categories
Culture

The Esmeralda Motif: Why Alan Menken’s Score Works

Photo Credit: Alessandro Dobici

By Amelia Awan

Ever since I read the book, I have always hated the English translation of its name.  

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, while being a fitting title for many adaptations of the story  (including the Disney film and subsequent musical which  I am about to discuss), is not at all a  good descriptor of a book in which Quasimodo is arguably a supporting character at best.  Needless to say, this is not the original title of the novel. In 1831, Victor Hugo published a novel  simply called “Notre-Dame de Paris”, or in English, “Our Lady of Paris”. Having read the book, I  think that this is a perfect title for this piece. Not only does it refer to the dozens of pages dedicated to describing the monumental cathedral, but it also refers to Esmeralda. Referring to Esmeralda as  “Our Lady” not only puts her in the spotlight as the central character of the piece, but it also beautifully showcases how the narrative treats her just as a character: not as her own person,  but as a MacGuffin of sorts that each of the male characters wants to gain in some way;  she’s our lady.  

As much as the story of the musical changed from its original source material, Esmeralda’s role  in this regard is one thing that is conserved perfectly. Alan Menken is a composer who is known for his use of leitmotifs, a word which here means “a melody that is associated with a character or place in the story”. Most of the main characters have their own leitmotifs that they sing themselves throughout the musical; Quasimodo has his melody at the start of Heaven’s Light,  Phoebus has Rest and Recreation (a melody that exists purely as a leitmotif without text in the  original film), and Frollo gets pretty much the rest of them. When one looks at Esmeralda’s  songs, there doesn’t really seem to be any common link between them; even Esmeralda’s most famous song, “God Help The Outcasts”, wasn’t used as any kind of basis for any of her other  songs. The “Someday” motif, when it is sung, is mainly used to represent innocence and hope  more generally rather than Esmeralda herself, hence why we see it most often sung by the  choir rather than any of the cast.  

However, Esmeralda does have a leitmotif, it’s just not sung by her. The Esmeralda motif is first  shown in Rest and Recreation, in an otherwise forgettable section of the song where Clopin  welcomes her to Paris. The relevance of this motif comes back in full stride in the finale of Act 1, which is itself titled “Esmeralda”, and this time, the melody is sung angrily by the soldiers  (including Phoebus himself!) and then later by the soldiers with Frollo. At no point in her own  song does Esmeralda actually sing anything. The next time it occurs, just before the finale, it is  sung by Frollo, further cementing this idea of Esmeralda being ours; at this moment in time,  Frollo still believes Esmeralda to be his, as a feat that he has to reckon with, and that he is better off having accomplished this “feat”. The Esmeralda motif never appears after this moment.  Esmeralda is a much stronger and better written character in the musical than she is in the  novel, but her role as “Our Lady” still shines through. It is worth mentioning that the Esmeralda motif is sung by every character who falls in love with her (and also Clopin), with the notable  exception of Quasimodo. This is because Quasimodo’s affections for Esmeralda are deliberately painted as differently as possible from Frollo’s lust for her; there is a very good reason why  Heaven’s Light and Hellfire happen in immediate succession from each other (and of course,  the names of the respective songs are no coincidence). I would not say that the musical’s  choice to retain some elements of the book and some elements of the film is always done as well as possible. However, the decision to have the Esmeralda motif always be sung by her suitors and never by Esmeralda herself is the perfect addition to this story. The motivic  complexity of the musical, along with the precision of the choices made in this leitmotif  specifically make Menken’s score a true work of art, and a perfect embodiment of Esmeralda’s  role in the story.

Photo Credit – Alessandro Dobici

Categories
Culture

Pentire at The Grove

By Isobel James

It’s the first beer garden type evening of the year, but not an inch of me regrets spending it in the brick and buzz of The Grove. Pentire, the up-and-coming indie rock group from Herefordshire, didn’t come to play. Or, rather, they played in every sense of the verb.

From the moment that Pentire took to the stage, tellingly entering to Tubthumping by Chumbawamba (Google it; you’ll know it and chuckle), their set unravels into wit, electricity, and flourishing artistry. Launching into their 2022 anthem Watch Time with Me, it’s immediately apparent: Jack Morgan might just be the cheekiest frontman ever to grace this venue.

If there’s a fourth wall between Jack and the crowd, it’s there for him to obliterate. From the manneristic eyebrow raises adorning every song to a slapstick grimace after an on-stage stumble, Jack made every moment a conversation between him and the crowd. He had us spellbound, and vice versa: so attuned to the audience, it felt as if I so much as blinked for a second too long, Jack would catch on. He pointed at recording phones — sparse in a crowd too immersed — and gestured along to the strongest lyrics with a head point, a shrug, a growing smile. In an entrancing 90-minute set, Jack Morgan owned the room, intimate as it was, in a way that made you see Pentire headlining much bigger ones soon.

Jack may be the magnetic core, but the band around him are in no way peripheral to Pentire’s hypnotic act. Owen Seymour, perhaps the first (and not the last) cardigan-donned electric guitarist that I’ve seen, cruised through the gig nonchalantly. Yet the twangs of his riffs carried as the vital bedrock of Pentire’s nostalgic, coming-of-age indie sound. Throughout the set, Owen exchanged boyish grins with the bassist Jacob Beswetherick, whose basslines were the pulse powering every track, particularly in Get Up. Jake Weaver was the drumming dark horse of the set — quiet when the songs called for it, but every re-entry reminded you exactly why he’d been missed.

Together, Pentire make live music feel genuinely alive. Like the Cornish headland they’re named after, their music is the sonic equivalent of a summer drive to the coast: all warmth and easy rhythm, with the windows-down momentum of a sunny day. The bigger choruses carry traces of The Killers’ arena instinct; the quieter moments have something of Paolo Nutini’s soulful looseness. Pentire wear their influences lightly enough, though, that it mostly just sounds like themselves.

Much of the set drew from their January EP Love on TV. Standout moments included the witty lyricism of Fading Out (“Was there something else in my drink, or have I had a little bit too much to think?”), a longer-than-comfortable pause in the middle of I Won’t Waste Your Time — a characteristic tease from Jack — and the crowd’s sheer volume in Boy in the Machine. Even the setlist itself was opened to the room, with a surprise song voted for via QR code — proof, if any were needed, that the crowd are as much a part of a Pentire show as the band themselves.

To call the gig high-octane is an understatement: it felt as though Pentire would never tire. And yet, by the final stretch, there were glimpses of exhaustion in Jack — not that it ever faltered his on-stage fervour. If anything, it was the final tell-all: a Pentire gig is never half-hearted. Backed by BBC Introducing and festival slots at Truck, Y Not and Isle of Wight, bigger rooms are surely coming — but on Friday night, Pentire came to play with, not simply for, Newcastle’s crowd.

Featured Image: The Bodega

Categories
Travel

What To Pack

By Tashy Back

As I sat in a hopeless heap on my floor, surrounded by collapsing piles of clothes, I found myself stuck, once again, on that question which always seems far more important than it should be: what to pack?  I know travelling is supposed to be about exciting new experiences and I fear that my love of roaming around strange countries may appear fraudulent, but clothing has always had a way of dictating how I move through somewhere new. More importantly though, how I feel I am perceived by the people there, with the constant risk of exposing myself immediately as a stereotypically obnoxious tourist as an ever daunting prospect.

Hong Kong, even before arriving, felt like somewhere that might read you quite quickly. The problem was that my wardrobe, unhelpfully, operates in extremes, either geared towards a nippy London winter or summers spent lounging at the beach, with very little in between. It became increasingly clear, as I tried and failed to assemble any sort of convincing outfit, that neither category would quite work. This was confirmed, with some amusement, by friends who had grown up there, who informed me that my usual Durham-coded style of baggy jeans and a half-decent top would not, in fact, cut the mustard. Indeed, nights out came with a far more specific expectation of short skirts and knee-high boots, a dress code which I hadn’t quite accounted for. 

On our train ride from the airport into the city, Hong Kong presented itself to me in all its majesty, angular glass towers packed tightly together, then just behind, steep verdant green hills pushing forward, as if the city and the jungle had never quite agreed where one ends and the other begins. Moving through the island only deepened my impression of Hong Kong as a place of contrasts, as the city shifted abruptly from the compressed intensity of crowded streets where double-decker trams trundle slowly past, and people move quickly but without urgency, caught in the steady hum of city life. Then there are the isolated and deeply rural beaches on the south side of the island, where, as you gaze at the never-ending silver line of the horizon, the city seems to fall away entirely. From neon-lit crowds and late nights that drag on in heat and fervour with voices spilling out from bars onto the street, to sudden pockets of stillness that catch you off guard, a dog nosing along the tide line, a lone figure propped up against the wall smoking, the glow of his lighter briefly lifting his face from the dark, before it all slips back again.

The air in the city felt even heavier than I expected, humid, carrying with it a mix of exhaust fumes, sea salt, a faintly earthy smell, and, drifting in and out, the sharp, sweet trace of incense. At times, the city felt unexpectedly close to England, the sky turning grey, the air thick and unmoving, with a heaviness that hung low over everything. We spent that weekend after our arrival watching the rugby Sevens in a jam-packed stadium, surrounded by noise, not-so-cheap drinks, and a rowdy crowd that buzzed on the edge of disorder. Just a few hours later, I found myself walking down a side street, shutters half down, stray light pooling onto the pavement, the city suddenly smaller and more contained. Then, one night later that week, looking out over the city from the Peak, it shifted for me yet again, lights blurring into streaks of white, amber, and neon blue as the city spread out beneath me, more expansive than it had ever felt from the ground, running on without any clear edge. Within these constant shifts, I began to understand that Hong Kong is a layered island, one that operates with its own unique rhythm. 

It was through my boyfriend, who calls Hong Kong home, that these layers began to take on meaning, because to walk through a place with someone who knows it intimately is to inherit a version of it that is not quite your own. We traced fragments of his childhood: half-forgotten amusement parks, familiar street corners, stories of clambering over corrugated iron fences for afternoon tea taken on silver trays by the derelict swimming pool, these places that meant everything to him and nothing to me, until suddenly they didn’t. I saw the city not just in the present, but as it had been, its past carried in his memory, which was a strangely intimate way of experiencing a new place, and one that made me constantly aware of my position somewhere between observer and participant. There is something slightly surreal about temporarily inhabiting someone else’s home like that.

While wandering the island, we stopped at a small temple near the beach, easy to miss from the road. Inside, it was all red and gold, incense burning slowly in large bronze bowls, ash gathering in soft grey layers, and offerings of bowls of fruit arranged carefully in front of brightly painted figures. As we explored, my boyfriend told me how, as a child, he and his brothers had filmed a homemade ninja film in the square just in front of the temple. It was hard not to picture it as he spoke, a scrappy, ginger-haired boy darting between the benches and trees, sticks clutched like weapons, the whole thing playing out against the same still backdrop. For a moment it felt as though we were transported back a decade with the present still holding the faint outline of what had been.

At the Hong Kong Museum of Art, I came across the work of Wu Guanzhong, who saw Hong Kong as a place where he could “see both the East and the West at the same time,” an idea reflected in his paintings, where Western scenes are rendered through traditional Chinese techniques and familiar forms shift between the two, creating a hybrid art form that links cultures. This convergence between the east and the west still lingers in Hong Kong, even after the handover to China; on one side of the street is a quintessentially British M&S, coolly lit and orderly, and opposite it, a Cantonese dim sum restaurant with plastic stools, worn menus, and steam rising from bamboo baskets. What struck me most, however, was how my friends who had grown up flitting between Hong Kong and England seemed to effortlessly embody this duality as they adjusted how they spoke and presented themselves with an instinctive ease that revealed a lived internationalism.

By the end of my time there, I had stopped thinking about the contents of my suitcase. What stayed with me instead was seeing Hong Kong through the eyes of someone who had always known it, which was, for me, the most revealing and perhaps the most meaningful way to experience it.

Images courtesy of Tashy Back

Categories
Poetry

Bomber, Brother

By Robin Reinders

The morning has not yet decided to be morning –
A pale seam of light lying low along the hedgerow
Beyond the hangars –
Everything else ready-room charcoal and damp tin.
The trainers crouch along the tarmac, wings folded
Like birds waiting out a storm.

We sit on the narrow step of one of them –
Shoulder to shoulder because there is no other way to sit –
Soles knocking the aluminium skin.
The metal is cold enough
To steal heat through wool.
You swear softly from behind your teeth –
Shove your hands beneath your thighs.
‘Christ–
Colder than the Channel.’
Your breath ghosts between us,
Seeps into the nothing void of the sunless dark.

I strike a match.
The flare of it briefly paints your face gilt-gold –
Young still, soft along the jaw,
Eyes gentle
And half-lidded with sleep.
The cigarette takes to the flame –
Tobacco curls wonderfully into the air, bitter and sweet the way sweat is.
You pitch gracelessly forward to steal the first draw
Before I can lift it to my mouth,
Shoulder bumps mine –
‘Greedy bastard’, I mutter.
‘Pilot’s privilege’, you answer.
Cocksure. Irritating.
Your grin flickers quick and mean like the spark of the match –
Bright and licking up cruel and then gone.
Smoke leaks skywards from your mouth.
For a moment it hangs between us
Like breath on cold glass.

…

Inside the cockpit the instruments sit dark and patient,
Anticipating handling.
The seats absurdly close together –
A joke among all us flyboys –
Knees almost touching
Even before the parachutes and the harness
And everything else we carry into the kite with us.

You climb in first –
I tell you to –
The leather of your jacket creaks
Like saddle tack.
When I follow
There is the usual awkward instance –
Boots tangling with pedals,
Shoulders negotiating space
That will never be won between two grown boys
And their clumsy limbs.
We afford one another the same dignity
As bedfellows.

‘Give us the cigarette.’
You hold out your hand behind you
Without turning to face me.
I place it gingerly between your fingers.
Your glove brushes my wrist in hasty hungry hunt for the filter –
I feel as if some surface part of me has been permanently smeared by it.

The cockpit smells thickly of oil
And stale canvas.
Smoke threads through the cramped air
In thin blue ribbons.
You lean back in your seat impish and lazy,
So the cigarette hangs near my mouth.
I bend forward to take it –
A cat lapping milk from the dish and
Our helmets knock.
You laugh like you’re out of breath.
‘Careful –
We ain’t even wheels up yet.’

The ember pulses blood orange when I draw.
For a second the light of it
Paints the underside of your jaw all ruddy and raw.
Pink-skinned.
Your throat moves when you swallow.
Clicks.
(‘Why do all-a men got a Adam’s apple? Hell they do wi’ mine?’)
You notice I notice and know this is tolerable.

Outside, ground crew voices drift through the dark.
Boots clink-clanking on metal ladder-rungs.
Someone slams a hangar door with
The same rough-handed tenderness you’d handle a horse.
A lark begins somewhere beyond the field –
Thin, tinny, delirious music climbing the sky
Like a dizzy soprano.

You reach forward to fiddle with the compass housing.
Your sleeve drags across my forearm.
Friction of wool
And leather.
It is ridiculous.
It all is.

‘–?’ you ask.
Your voice is easy –
And careless –
Like how you fly and handle girls.
I shake my head though I never register what it is that you said.

You hand the cigarette back –
The flighty little pulse beneath your skin
Jumping through the opening in the glove seam –
The ghost of it stays in my palm.
The last of the ash lengthens, trembles.
You reach to tap it out the window
And your bony elbow nudges my ribs.
‘Sorry.’
‘Sure?’
You grin like you’re going to survive this one too –
Allow me to get you back for it.

…

The eastern sky lightens
From jet-black to Bobby’s blue velvet.
The trainers along the runway begin
To show their shapes –
Long wings, blunt noses,
Frost dulling the metal.

You stretch one leg forward,
Moony and slow,
Your ankle
Bullying my shin out the way.
I go without much fight.
‘We’ll be home for breakfast’, you speak
Through the palm
Dragging down your weary face.
‘Powdered eggs and cold coffee’, my lippy retort.

You draw once more on the dying smoke-butt –
Deep enough to burn it to the stub –
Then hold your leftovers out to me –
As if there’s anything left.
As if I should thank you kindly.
The heat from your last drag warms the thin paper.
I feel as though a detonator is beneath my thumb.

Outside, someone laughs, sharp and awake –
You snatch the butt back,
Flick it out into the wet grass,
Dewy from the damp English dawn.
It lands –
And dies with a small hiss.

Featured Image: Australian War Memorial, William Dargie, 1945

Categories
Creative Writing

Dolphin in a Mug

By Toby Dossett

The mug was one I hadn’t seen in years, pale blue, its glaze a faint crackle I remembered from childhood. It sat on the kitchen counter as though it had always been there, waiting for me in the thin morning light. I reached for it out of habit, expecting warmth, but the porcelain was cold to the touch. Colder than the room, and colder than the rain ticking at the window.

When I lifted it, I almost dropped it. It was far too heavy. Not full-heavy, not the usual weight of tea or water, but a dense, gathering heaviness, as though the mug contained something larger than itself. I peered down into it. Inside, the liquid was dark at first, then glassy, then trembling: ripples widening into lingering silver ovals. Something moved beneath them. A small bottlenose rose slowly through the surface.

It did not belong in the mug, and yet there it was: slender, blue-grey, gleaming as though lit from somewhere under the water. It pushed its nose above the liquid and held there, watching me with one black, polished eye. Then it nudged upwards again, gently at first, then more insistently, as if it wanted the brush of my hand.

It kept rising, breaking the thin surface over and over with an impatient, pleading motion. Touch me, help me, and love me enough to lift me out. The wanting in it was unbearable.

I glanced toward the doorway, seized by the absurd thought that someone might see. Not the dolphin exactly, but me with it—me cradling this strange thing in both hands, pretending tenderness for a creature I didn’t entirely trust. Its little clicks quickened and the mug grew heavier still. In one sharp movement I carried it to the sink and tipped it out.

The creature slid free with the water, struck the metal basin, and changed instantly. No longer sleek or living, but hollow, bright, ridiculous—a plastic bath toy with a painted eye and a seam along its side. It spun in circles, tail flailing desperately, each turn slower than the last until the water spiralled away in a thin, dirty whirl. Its final clicks were softer now, mechanical. The toy tipped, caught the pull of the plughole, and vanished.

Featured Image – Toby Dossett

Categories
Reviews

Roots Theatre Company’s Othello: Review

By Mwambu Haimbe

“Haply, for I am black and have not those softer parts of conversation that chamberers have…”

Throughout my GCSEs (all the way in 2022, can you believe it) I extensively read over this passage of Othello’s monologue in Act 3 Scene 3, after Iago has sown the seeds of jealousy that would eventually lead to Othello’s decline and ultimately his demise. 

By no means the most quoted line of the play, this line is important to me because it speaks to something that is glossed over quite a bit in everyday readings of Othello: his own struggle with internalised racism. It is this understated struggle that made me grow fond of Othello even beyond my study, and it has been my life’s dream to see a performance of it that brings this and many other hidden themes of Othello’s subtext to the fore. 

Having that in mind, it is safe to say that the new juggernaut in Durham Student Theatre, Roots Theatre Company, has satisfied that life’s dream beyond my wildest comprehension. Directors Bea Pescott-Khan and Aaliyah Angir, assisted by Zara Khan, have done what many directors much more senior to them have seemingly failed to do, which is balance the obvious racial commentary of Othello with its stark commentaries about the various ways in which race and social class intermesh. 

This framing is particularly significant today, in a world where race and class have been exploited by bad-faith actors in politics and media to divide the world into tribal camps pitted to destroy one another. Pescott-Khan, Angir and Khan have taken an age old classic and, through precise staging, reserved yet conscious set design and intuitive blocking, transformed it into a masterpiece of social commentary that William Shakespeare himself would certainly watch enviously. 

A great example of this intuitive direction certainly has to be the clear directorial decision to have Ollie Painter’s Iago speak in two different accents to mark his devilish asides and his false persona of nicety he puts on to his superiors. Through Iago’s mischief, we see the absurdity of the noble classes and how easily their love of appearances brings about their undoing. 

This is most evident in Iago’s manipulation of Micheal Cassio. Iago understands that Cassio’s reputation matters to him most. By sullying his reputation, Cassio becomes a tool for Iago’s use, incapable of realising that the man he asks for help in restoring his standing with Othello is the same man actively seeking to destroy him. 

There are many other directorial choices like this that demonstrate a clear vision and understanding of Othello’s themes as well as an understanding of where Othello fits in our modern eye. However, none of the directors’ keen vision could have been possible without the exemplary work of a cast and crew deserving of mountainous amounts of praise, therefore I must give credit to the performances before I hark on too greatly about the directing. 

For me, the glue of this production is surely Dan Katsande as Othello. He is mighty and  magnanimous when he first comes on stage as the brave ‘Moor’ General greatly renowned in Venice, until he is sympathetic and vulnerable as the lowly cuckold, self-pitying as he bears his soul out due to what he believes is a mortal wound from his lover. Katsande becomes unhinged and manic, fully embracing the beastly cuckold and the horrid Moor that he believes he has become, before doing the unthinkable to the woman he had risked his office and reputation for just a few short acts before. 

It is a terrifyingly good performance – one where he commands his body to act before a line is spoken and, when the line is spoken, the audience are captivated all the more by his grand delivery, reminding them that Othello is a man of great power and poise. Katsande’s shrieks of pain and manic ramblings make us sympathise with Othello almost by force, we are shocked by his horrible treatment of Desdemona (played by Liv Fancourt), yet our hearts break watching this once great general become something more akin to an animal than a man – which Katsande delivers perfectly in the latter half of the play by lowering his shoulders and prowling around Desdemona when he speaks. Although at times he runs the risk of over-acting, particularly in scenes where he is howling in pain at Desdemona’s apparent betrayal, he grounds the performance, commanding the stage with his presence, physicality and booming voice.

A performance like Katsande’s is difficult to match, but Ollie Painter’s devilishly charismatic portrayal of Iago is certainly up to the task. Painter does something seemingly impossible in this show: he almost makes Iago likeable. Speaking directly to the audience in a crisp Cockney accent, Painter moves naturally in his dialogue, making them laugh through sheer charisma. He mocks and jeers at the posh, unexposed Roderigo, played by Sam Garratt, completely unaware that Iago is scamming him. The joke is every other posh, ignorant character onstage, the comic is the whip-smart, perceptive Iago and the audience to this stand-up is us. It is brilliant. 

There is a real venom and contempt in Painter’s line delivery. We really do believe that he detests Othello. It is an organic performance that comes from a place of clear understanding of the character. Iago’s struggle is one of class: Iago represents the disenfranchised working classes who feel betrayed, who feel as though despite their hard work they have either been pushed aside by unqualified aristocratic nobles (Michael Cassio) or racial minorities given access to empowerment schemes (Othello). Through his accent, Painter characterises this clearly to the audience. Iago is not like the others, therefore Iago is evil. 

The performances on display in this production facilitated the subtext that the directors intended for it. In what I refuse to accept was a debut performance, Amaya Uppal as Emilia delivered a masterclass on how to enhance the performance of others, and deliver one’s own performance just as spectacularly. Uppal was quietly disobedient to Iago, yet disobedient enough to irritate him, sowing seeds for her eventual end. She gives Fancourt’s Desdemona space to be overcome by woe and anguish, and she stands toe to toe with Katsande to create pulpable tension. Yet, where she is left to shine in her own moments, she is passionate, forceful, and fearless, delivering an exceptional debut worthy of praise. 

It speaks to the quality of a production’s cast if in a review it takes this long for the name “Cillian Knowles” to appear. Exceptional as always and effortlessly comedic, Knowles somehow turns Cassio into a Shakespearian character that feels like he was written by Wilde. In Knowles’s Cassio we see the absurdity of nobility come to the fore through his absurdly sweet prim and proper boy scout routine with Desdemona. So absurd and sweet is this boy scout façade that Iago can’t help but to use it to bring about the downfall of Othello and Desdemona’s lives. When he is not sickeningly charming, Knowles is delivering an extremely funny drunken, slurring Cassio that does not feel drawn out. Knowles is endearing, even when he is spewing misogyny directed at Bianca, and loveable and far too good at being Michael Cassio. 

Stepping away from the acting for just one second (I have plenty more to say), every detail of this production weaves together in a dance full of chemistry. Leyla Aysan and Molly Winchurst are no slouches in the lighting department, as they bathed the stage in fantastic midnight blue that holds a dark brooding atmosphere over this tragedy, only deviating from this colour scheme in the few moments of levity in the show or when using spotlights to showcase key moments in the show’s sequence. Aysan and Winchurst also teamed up nicely with movement director Robyn Bradbury, as all the moments of physicality, such as the hypnotic party sequence, were complimented deliciously by superb lighting. The fight scenes were also well choreographed – at times a little too well choreographed as you could see the fiction behind them – but so long as the performers remained safe, I was willing to suspend my disbelief. 

Special mention must be given to the sound of this production. Music cues between scene changes is standard in student theatre, but rarely does it ever match the story being told on stage and the theatre company itself. Emilia Edwards and Shaan Thomas made use of the songs they selected between scenes, as if you paid close enough attention to the lyrics, they reflected the action and the intensity as the story progressed. However, I do wish the ingenuity of sound could have been used to aid some of the performers, who at times struggled with their voice projection and lost some details to the ceiling of the Assembly Rooms. 

Back to the quality of performance in this show: I would be a hack reviewer if I did not mention the one and only Liv Fancourt. If I had a pound for every time Fancourt has stunned me to silence with her performances I can safely say I would be a very rich man indeed. In my personal opinion, I have always had a dislike of Desdemona as a character, primarily because Shakespeare uses her as a plot device – the innocent white girl corrupted and murdered by the uncontrollable black beast. In other iterations of Othello Desdemona is this faultless character used to highlight the faults of Othello, but not here. Fancourt gives Desdemona life. She is quirky and quick witted when she speaks with Iago after arriving in Cyprus, sarcastic with a doting Michael Cassio and even slightly resilient, when she refuses to let Iago see her in tears after Othello has just thrown her to the floor and called her a whore. There is strength in Fancourt’s Desdemona, a strength that is created by the love Othello has for her. When she feels Othello’s love wain, her own strength wains, which makes her death that more impactful. Fancourt makes Desdemona’s death matter more because she is not just a plot device. She is a person who Othello betrays by not trusting her loyalty yet she dies still loving him – an aspect of her performance furthered by the incredible chemistry between herself and Katsande. It is a performance that someone like Fancourt can make you think is easy to deliver yet so many before her have not been able to crack it. 

As I wind down this review, the more perceptive amongst you would have noticed I have not mentioned Sam Garratt (Roderigo), Becca Morran (Bianca and others), Ross Killian (Brabantio and others), Nia Keogh-Peters (First Senator and others), Nerfertari Williams (Gratiano and others) and Jasper Hinds (Lodovico and others) and I have reasons for that. These performers were absolutely incredible when given time. For example, Garratt embodied Roderigo with such perfection and accuracy I was overjoyed whenever he came on stage, and Killian’s Brabantio was vile in all the best ways, showing a real understanding of the character’s purpose to the story. All the members of the ensemble pieced this story together perfectly, however, I feel that they were all hard done by both the nature of this play and the director’s visions. The overwhelming feeling I had when watching Othello was that Roots had an obvious and large chip on their shoulders. For their first production as a newly established theatre company, tackling such a well-known and heavy play is a very risky bit of business, and that means your cast has no choice but to deliver. The cast did, in fact, deliver but it felt like the director’s had concentrated a vast amount of energy into the main cast, leaving the supporting and ensemble cast very little creative direction to work with. This hurt in particular Keogh-Peters and Williams who I believe are talents that any production would fight tooth and nail to have in their cast. If you do not believe me go and read the reviews of the DDF show Poetry Club. They are immense and I wanted, in fact this production needed, to have the two of them on stage a lot more with a lot more in terms of lines and time to work with. If I can level any criticism against this production it is that: not fully using all the amazing talent at their disposal and never fully removing their hand from the handbrake. 

Overall, Roots delivered a version of Othello that I wish I could see over and over again. The directing choices were for the most part informed, precise, and deeply aware of Othello’s greater narrative. The story Roots delivered blended elements of class and race issues in a way that was brave and long overdue, especially in a place like Durham. My only hope for Roots is that they lean into these themes more heavily and fully utilise all the talent at their disposal. However, all things withstanding, this juggernaut of a theatre company is destined for many great things to come and I cannot wait to see what else they deliver. Adieu!

Featured Image: Roots Theatre Company

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